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Monday, 10 March 2014

Image Conscious - Watermarking Photographs...

With all the awful stories about people finding their own photographic
images on other peoples sites I've long been thinking that it's time I
did something about watermarking the thousands of images I take. I'm a
bit of a Luddite when it comes to techie things so I always put them off
and when I do bite the bullet it usually turns out to be simpler that I
thought - and this was no exception.

If like me you
don't have existing soft ware to deal with this then there are number
applications available online - many advertised as free although this
generally seems to be for a trial period or with very limited
capabilities.

I started of with a free trial for an application called Visual Watermark which seemed very simple to use and had everything I need - particularly batch processing, so I eventually bought the app for a one off payment of £18/$29.99 which considering the amount of photographs I take didn't see too bad. I'm not one for comparing and trying a whole host of apps - once I find one that does what I want I tend to go for it and stick with it. If you want to shop around a bit more there are a few links at the bottom of this post that might be useful.

So now I had the means to add watermarks to my photos I had to think about what I actually wanted them to look like. I wanted it to be more than just a simple name but I don't really have a logo for my brand because I dabble with so many things that it's hard to come up with a defined and representative image. At this point the lovely Caroline Dewison (who is definitely a tech head) offered to convert an image to a line drawing that would be suitable for a watermark so I started going through pictures to see if anything jumped out.

I kept coming back to this favourite image of one of my most popular lines from last autumn.

I revamped my business cards recently and used a cropped version of tis image on the back of them and, since a lot of my work is influenced by nature I thought maybe a stylised version of this would be a good representation and give me a cohesive feeling to my branding.

So Caroline got to work and came up with numerous images starting with a line drawing that highlighted the veining of the leaves in the image and then this blocked version.

However, when used in the small sizes required for the watermark they lost definition and looked a bit fuzzy so she smoothed out the edges and simplified the design to this.

I really like the clarity and simplicity of the lines so this is what I've decided to go with and now I'm happily playing with it in Visual Watermark to see how and where it works best. I personally don't think watermarks that go across the subject matter are appropriate when the image is intended to sell and can be off putting so, it needs to be positioned in such a way as to be noticeable but not obtrusive and close enough not to be simply cropped out.

As you can see the watermark can be moved, sized and rotated as required and I think for it to be most effective I might need to think a bit more about the placement of my products for photography than I currently do. I like where it's going though and will continue to play around and test fonts and transparency until I come up with the perfect fit.

If you are looking to do something similar these are a few links I came across during my investigations which as I said may be of use - although I haven't tried them so can't vouch for them.

I love your choice of font and the grey with Caroline's simple logo. Your new biz card is quite attractive too. You even seem to have plenty of white space around your images, so I'd say mission accomplished!

I used to watermark my images (one by one - what a drag) but they were still stolen and used on ebay, now I don't but I do search google images every so often to check if my images are being used elsewhere.I do think now though with sites like pinterest it is getting more important to watermark not just for copy right but so that people can find your website as sometimes the back links to images are lost meaning lost sales etc.

Thank you so much for this post, Lesley, your logo looks great, thank you for sharing the process of creation of your log, very interesting and with a wonderful and professional result! I need to look into mine...

If people are looking for software to add watermarks, remember that you don't need specialist watermarking software for it! Depending on what you use to edit your photos, chances are that can do it already - all you need to do is create the text and/or image you want your watermark to be, and paste it onto your image while you are editing it. I use the GIMP, which is free. If you use Photoshop, Serif, PaintshopPro, they can all do it. (You want whatever you are using to be able to set transparency).

The Goddess THEA

THEA was the Greek goddess of sight and the lights of the sky as personified by her children Helios, Selene and Eos - goddesses of the sun, moon and dawn. She also had dominion over gems and precious metals and their inherent light. Painting: Star of Heaven by Edward Robert Hughe

About Me

Funny, caring, loyal, reasonably smart, sometimes stroppy, occassionally neurotic but mostly very positive. Have got to the point where life's too short so the plan is to stop doing things I don't enjoy and do more of the things I do.